DF:UW – Sieging Alden Enak

Last night OTG had a siege against The Empire for their hamlet of Alden Enak (AE), located just south of our city of Kvit.

The nice thing about this siege was that the numbers, gear, and player skill were about as even as you are likely to find in Darkfall, resulting in multiple battles in a few locations rather than one steamrolling.

The unfortunate part was that on our end, we had a lot of crashing, which we believe is tied to using Mumble instead of TS3 or Vent. In each battle a good 20-30% of our force would randomly crash, which not only reduced our overall fighting numbers, but caused havoc for communication and organization. It did not appear that The Empire clan members were crashing nearly as often, which is good once we correct the Mumble issue, but bad for trying to win that particular siege.

For me personally, a few crashes aside, performance was excellent. I kept my game maxed out at 1900×1200 and never had my FPS dip below 60 or my ping go over 70, even though at the peak of combat we had over 100 total players fighting it out.

On to the fighting itself!

Right as I got home and was preparing to log on, Empire was raiding Kvit and blew up our bank. After they cleared out, we formed up a group of about 20, got on a boat, and sailed around for a sneak attack on their hamlet. The idea was to kill who they had before the siege went live, and hopefully hold the hamlet itself so they could not use it as a rally point.

The boat ride itself was uneventful, and we snuck up on the hamlet without incident. They had around 20 players as well, some right at the bank and others spread around the hamlet grounds. Our initial charge took down a few, but they quickly rallied to some high ground and counter-pushed. One warrior in particular, sporting Dread Plate (second-best warrior armor), was incredible disruptive and took a few of us down. After a few back and forth pushes, we lost too many and had to retreat back to our city.

After both sides gained some more members, a scout reported Empire was heading into our city. We decided to retreat up the lift we have in Kvit (the city itself is inside a mountain with three large cave entrances. A lift runs to the top of the mountain through a hole in the ceiling. There is also a path up the side of the mountain that leads to the top area). Once at the top, we waited for the enemy to follow us up, and planned to AoE the lift as it came up.

The plan initially worked, but once we started AoE’ing those on the lift, they jumped off, and we made the tactical mistake of getting on the lift ourselves and taking it back down into the city. The enemy was able to AoE us as the lift reached the bottom, and our general disorganization lead to a rather quick defeat (I crashed right as the lift hit the ground, so missed the fighting, and once back inside had to sneak my way out of the city). Though we did take down a few, overall we got wiped and they were able to loot most of our graves and ride back out of our city.

The final major battle occurred again at our city. Empire again made a push, but this time we were more organized and held them at the southern cave entrance. The choke point where a city gate can be built (we have not built the walls yet) was AoE’ed heavily by both sides, and the first push from the Empire was turned back as they lost half a dozen fighters, with the rest falling back outside to regroup.

However the second pushed got them through the choke point, and while we held for a while further inside, ultimately we again were overwhelmed and defeated.

It was only after this battle that the siege officially went live with our siege stones becoming vulnerable. At this point however moral was pretty low, people were low on gear bags, and we never reformed to defend the stones. Empire took them down quickly, and the siege ended with them retaining their hamlet.

Crashing aside, it was a very fun night, and while initially OTG was a bit down, identifying the Mumble-based crashing and getting on TS3/Vent will mean next time we don’t have to deal with the technical issues getting in the way.

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12 Responses to DF:UW – Sieging Alden Enak

Hmm..no offense but it doesn’t sound like siege at all. It doesn’t seem to have any consequences of you guys losing, you didn’t lose your city or hamlet etc when got wiped. The whole thing sounds like no difference from two parties just come at each other again and again in open field or anywhere else.

That actually is exactly how sieges worked. the defender had an advantage, and if the attacker loses, the city doesn’t change hands. For the city to change hands, the attacker must win. It sounds like the sides were relatively well matched, so if the other people had sieged Syn’s city, which apparently they never did, they probably would have lost the siege. This is very realistic.

I’d go with the wisdom booster, lets you easily switch between prim and Elem. Elem is much better for solo farming most mobs, but Prim is pretty awesome in group PvP (and likely group PvE once they add the round robin kill thing next patch)

Bad advice. Don’t do this. You can only have 1 booster active at a time and purchasing your second booster is more expensive than the first booster.

There is very little advantage in having a Wisdom booster as an Elementalist. You are better off understanding the benefits and trade-offs of each and chooses a path. By 6k prowess or so, you’ll know if that’s the right path for you.

Primalist have one damage ability that scales with the base attribute (Wisdom). The other magnitude of other spells do scale with Wisdom but they aren’t damage-dealing. The other problem here is that the “basic attack” which is Staffbolt scales with Intelligence rather than Wisdom.

Starting out, this makes a Primalist very difficult to play and it’s not uncommon to see Primalists put a lot of points into strength in order to melee. Many even start as a warrior because chain makes it easier to complete the low level feats. Also, keep in mind that this is an FPS game so you actually have to land your heals and rezzes (while often being called out as the primary target).

Elementlists do big damage even early-game but calling them squishy is an understatement. This makes them the least forgiving to play in PvP and you need to be very skilled to be effective. There is no middle ground — you are either great or horrible. Playstyle in PvP is mainly about using skills that make you “thorny” and using damaging spells that have knockbacks to create separation. That said, this role shines in sieges where they are usually able to stand back and nuke.

What ramifications does ‘destroying your bank’ have in DF:UW? Is it like blowing up a CHA in a POS in EVE, where the items therein are destroyed/jettisoned? Or does it just remove one access point to an inviolable ‘bank stash’ ?

Just disables it as a bank access point until it is repaired. That can be somewhat tricky if you have to lug repair shards a good distance, but for us in Kvit its not that big a deal.

If we had walls built destroying those not only creates a hole, but they can’t be repaired during a siege. If we had zap towers, disabling those stops them from firing, which is a huge advantage/disadvantage.